


don't walk with me

by Catheria



Category: BNA: Brand New Animal (Anime)
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gen, Missing Scene, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Survivor Guilt, angst without a happy ending :), rip to u guys but i had a blast (no i didnt i almost cried)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:15:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26755666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catheria/pseuds/Catheria
Summary: Missing episode 8 scene concerning Shirou after the incident and the inherent fear of being exposed in several different ways******or: Shirou and his hatred of vulnerability
Relationships: Barbara Rose & Ogami Shirou, Kagemori Michiru & Ogami Shirou
Comments: 6
Kudos: 66





	don't walk with me

**Author's Note:**

> This doesn't end on a happy note

Shirou lies on the cement floor of the warehouse. He burns. His body feels aflame, every molecule screaming in protest. The hole in his chest has managed to knit itself back together but he can’t even say his lungs heave in response to the agonizing pain wracking every last inch of him.

He feels separated from his own body, the only thing really anchoring him to it being the relentless torment of it trying to heal itself.

He can hear something through the ringing of his ears.  _ Michiru _ .

“Shirou!” she  _ screams _ , and Shirou selfishly wishes he couldn’t hear at all.

He can hear her footsteps as she sprints to his side.

She yells his name again. Or at least that’s what she thinks she says.

Shirou tries to rise to his feet, to walk away and shove the cat back into the bag and pretend this never happened. To put a cap on Michiru’s terror.

But he can’t. His limbs are useless despite his will.

“I’m fine,” he croaks out for the seventh time in the past ten minutes.

“Shirou you’re  _ not _ fine, I don’t even know how you’re-“ Michiru cuts herself off, but Shirou knows what she was going to finish with.

_ Still alive. _

Michiru’s voice fades out again, muffled by the haze of Shirou’s agony, before he hears another familiar voice.

“He’ll be fine, there’s no reason to worry Ms. Kagemori,” Rose comforts the tanuki, and a second later he feels the weight of a jacket draped over him.

The mayor’s assistant helps him to his feet and he hesitantly morphs back to human, wrapping the jacket around himself as firmly as he can in his frail state.

“She knows about me,” is all he can manage to say to Rose as he’s escorted out of the shell of a warehouse and into the back of her vehicle.

He is barely able to lie down on the lengthy backseat of Rose’s mayoral limo, his body agonizingly stiff and frail.

Her assistant gets into the driver’s seat the second he sees Shirou has accomplished sitting down.

Shirou faintly hears Rose tell Michiru, “Sit shotgun, he’ll be fine. I have some things to discuss with Ogami.”

To his own surprise, Shirou doesn’t hear Michiru argue against Rose’s orders for once.

Shirou feels exposed, stripped bare in a way that goes far beyond being clad with nothing but a jacket that isn’t even his and lying down in the backseat of a vehicle that also doesn’t belong to him.

If his hands weren’t grabbing the fabric so tightly that even on the verge of as close as he can get to death he’s white knuckled, they’d be grasping at his throat.

And Shirou feels stupid for it. Ashamed, even. Just another of the countless scars marring his body, barely visible against his already ghastly pale skin. But that doesn’t stop Shirou from hiding it at all costs, from recoiling at the sight of it, from grimacing even at the thought of it.

After wearing a collar night and day for so long, the touch of air against his neck makes him feel nothing but  _ wrong _ . Maybe it's the shame of the destruction he’s caused as a result of his own slaughter. Maybe it’s the trauma associated with it. Either way, the line of silver that streaks across his throat being exposed is something his body won’t allow.

Despite the stiffness and anguish of his flesh he shivers, blood running cold at the thought of his own death. The pain flares up again as he brings his hand, still firmly clutching the jacket laid over him, to his throat.

Nothing more but a scar that refuses to fade even after a millennia but it makes him feel like his body isn’t even close to his own.

A thousand years later and he still can remember exactly how it felt to have his own blood drowning him thanks to being impaled by a spear before the final motion of his throat being gashed open by the general’s blade.

The thought of the spear is enough in itself to make his body curl around the wound spanning his torso without his consent.

He flinches as he feels what had been somewhat healed tear open again, followed by the warm, sticky flow of blood. More blood.

Nowadays it’s always his. Sure, there’s a fair share of times he’s gotten splattered by some thug’s nose getting broken, but nothing like…

Shirou silences that track of thought.

The vehicle starts and the door opens but Shirou can already feel himself slipping into unconsciousness again thanks to tearing open the thin amount of healing on his enormous wound.

Shirou feels like he’s drowning in his own blood; it covers his body, it clouds his thoughts, it deafens his hearing.

He can vaguely sense the door slide shut and Rose’s presence but it’s already too late when she opens her mouth.

Shirou’s world fades to inky black for the millionth time, and all he can do is feel sorry. For yelling at Michiru earlier in the heat of the moment. For making her see him trampled to death and impaled and holding onto life if only through the thread of his immortality. For not being able to even answer to Rose. For letting himself become this useless and exposed and weak.

* * *

Shirou knows he isn’t awake when he sees the world dyed the same dark scarlet as blood. Just another bad memory that leaves him in tears when he wakes up.

Except this time is different. No bodies litter the maroon landscape, but it’s still painted in blood.

Shirou doesn’t understand at first. Or at least that is until he feels like he’s been stabbed in the chest.

Sharp and pointed pain strikes straight through his heart, and it doesn’t go away. His hand flies to his chest in instinctual response. But it doesn’t change anything. Blood, sticky and red and  _ his _ , flows through his fingers and drips onto the ground.

Shirou’s legs don’t buckle beneath him, though. He’s used to this type of agony, fought through worse.

Hand against heart, he weathers the anguish just as he has for the last millennia.

He feels his breathing get heavier, feels his own blood filling his lungs. Feels his hot tears burn against his face.

At least in nightmares no one can see Shirou, who’s only purpose in life and death is to be strong for others, fall apart in several different ways.

He finally has to drop to his knees, his other hand finding its place on top of his heart in desperation.

Shirou wants to wake up. To face something other than his past. But instead it just gets worse.

He coughs up blood, lungs ablaze in agony and teeth stained scarlet. He can live with his own pain, but the latter he cannot. A reminder of the suffering he’s caused others.

Shirou topples over, hands hopelessly limp against the never ending flow of blood spilling beneath his fingers.

Suddenly a spear materializes. Straight through his heart.

A shadow becomes a figure all too familiar to Shirou, wielding a sword and walking victoriously to Shirou’s lousy excuse for a body.

Before Shirou can blink what he knew was coming has already happened.

His throat burns and his own blood spills over his lips. He tries to do something,  _ anything _ , to show he isn’t defeated. Isn’t gone forever. But all he can do is shift his hands so they lie inches in front of his face.

Shirou can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t even cry. 

He lies there, unable to die and unable to heal. All he can do is lie lifeless in a puddle of his own blood, watching it wash over his ghastly pale skin. Scarlet against white. Bone and blood.

“How can you save anyone when you can’t even save yourself?” the general snickers in an unnervingly familiar voice, his blade stained in Shirou’s blood flashing in the dim light before his shadow of a body vanishes.

Shirou can feel a single tear run down his cheek and through the blood caked against it before he feels nothing at all.

* * *

Shirou jolts awake on the couch in his study, shaking violently from both the sobs freely wracking his body and from the anxiety attack starting to set in. Sweat makes his hair stick to his forehead and every inch of his body is both sore from healing and freshly ablaze in agony.

Shirou doesn’t hate crying. For him it’s usually quiet and a normal enough expression of emotion. But he does hate  _ this _ .

He can’t think straight enough to even begin to comprehend his nightmare, his chin quivers, loud sobs escape his lips, and all he can do is painfully hug his knees to his chest despite the protest of both his skin and the bandages that have appeared nearly everywhere on his body.

Kuro chirps in the background before landing on Shirou’s shoulder, rubbing his silky feathers against Shirou’s cheek in attempt to comfort him. It doesn’t go unappreciated.

Shirou can barely breathe thanks to the combination of an anxiety attack and his sobs, which doesn’t help in the aftermath of his nightmare.

_ How can you save anyone when you can’t even save yourself? _

Shirou brings his hands first to his chest, slowly and gently, as if at the slightest touch blood will run like a river from his heart.

They shakily clutch at his chest, the cotton of his bandages soft to the touch. He lets them rest there for a little while, his breathing beginning to slow. Kuro leans into him again, and Shirou wills himself to move his hands to his throat.

His breaths become ragged again as his fingers ghost what was torn open minutes ago.

He withdraws his hands twice as quickly as they were placed, returning them to his knees.

He notices he’s in a pair of his pants again, as well as he’s wearing socks. A minor detail. Just a pair of novelty wolf socks Michiru bought him, albeit with his own money and without his permission, but that’s all it takes to drive him to tears again.

Shirou feels guilty at so much as the thought of Michiru, now that she’s seen him slaughtered before her eyes and been drug into countless near death experiences thanks to his company.

Shirou keeps his emotional attachment to a minimum, but he couldn’t help but let the tanuki root herself in his heart. He needed someone to make him open up. She needed someone to act as a surrogate father. The result was a complicated and messy friendship, but it was worth it. At least to Shirou.

He hasn’t done anything but traumatized Michiru. His mind won’t let him forget how Michiru looked on in terror as he, her friend and essentially family at this point, was run through with the horn of a rhino before being trampled to an unrecognizable bloody pulp.

Shirou feels cold. Freezing, even.

He would curl up, as he usually did when cold or sad or just tired, but he knows he’d just tear himself open again.

Instead, he glances around his study for a blanket. His eyes stop at the sight of his coat at the end of the couch.

There’s no sign of his blood, no hole in the back, and not even a loose thread. But he knows it’s his, if only from the scent.

He leans forward to pick it up, a note falling out of the pocket as he does so. Shirou hesitates a second before leaning forward to grab it off of the floor, his pale hands against the darker paper catching his eye.

His gaze lingers a second too long, and a smeared coat of scarlet flashes against his ivory skin.

The note falls silently to the ground and Shirou rises to his feet so quickly he nearly faints and feels several wounds open up.

Before he can register anything he’s in the bathroom, door shut, sink on, and vigorously scrubbing his hands in attempt to wash away the blood that wasn’t there to begin with.

He can feel tears burn his cheeks for the seventh time, and tries to not look at himself in the mirror. But he fails at that, too.

His eyes dart up for a split second to see blood bleeding through his bandages, the unmistakable maroon tarnishing the once sterile white. Dizziness plagues him yet again and he crumples to the floor in a way that uneasily mirrors his nightmare.

He feels his knees scrape the tile as he grabs onto the sink basin in desperate attempt to rise back to his feet.

Shirou manages to stumble back to the couch, wrapping himself in his coat, trying to calm down in the least. But it’s too late. His vision is tinged black around the edges, his bandages and jacket splotchy maroon with his own blood, and his body limp on the couch.

* * *

Shirou wakes up a second time, this time without a nightmare. His bandages fresh again and his coat nowhere in sight. Kuro is perched above his head, and he sighs in relief at the sight of his bird.

Shirou slides his legs off the couch and sits up, staring vacantly at the wall. Kuro decides to perch on his shoulder and lean into his cheek again, and Shirou gladly accepts the reassuring touch.

He notices Michiru and Rose, both on the balcony. Given Michiru’s expression of disbelief and Rose’s stiffness, Shirou knows that his past is being explained.

And he still really wishes it wasn’t.

He knows Michiru deserves an explanation; an answer as to his behavior and who he is at his core. But at what cost?

Who in their right mind would want to be friends with  _ him _ ? Someone dead twenty times over, with mass murder and a thousand years of barely living under his belt? A false god, who will never amount to the legends or expectations or even his own standards?

All Shirou is is a disappointment to himself and the people he has sought out to protect.

And why would Michiru even bother to talk to him after knowing who he really is? She could easily avoid him with how often he’s not at home.

Shirou hates how much it unnerves him how easy it is to lose Michiru, the only family he’s had other than Rose for as long as he can remember.

He makes himself stand up, albeit slowly enough that he doesn’t bleed himself unconscious again, and limp over to his drawer. Surely enough, there’s a sweater neatly folded in it. Carefully, he pulls the soft black fabric over his head. The simple task causes dots to dance in his vision and the floor to spin beneath his feet. He grabs the top of the dresser, clutching it tightly enough that he can feel his nails dig into the wood. On top of the small dresser is his collar, blood still staining the leather.

Despite the blood and his wish to not need to hide who he is at his core to feel at all comfortable within his own body, Shirou puts on the collar with a sigh. He can feel his breathing slow down immediately with the familiar touch of the leather against his skin combined with the fact that his scar is out of sight and out of mind.

He grabs his gloves off of his desk, taking his time while putting them on because he knows he has to say something,  _ anything  _ to Michiru after the day’s events. That doesn’t stop him from wanting to disappear instead, however.

How could she even  _ look  _ at him after knowing what he’s done, who he is?

Shirou wants to let his back hit the wall and slide to the floor and hug his knees, but he knows he’ll just black out again thanks to the pain or reopening wounds or from just crying again. Shirou steels himself before forcing himself to walk out onto the balcony in the light of the setting sun.

* * *

It’s a blur to him. Michiru telling him that she’s still him to her regardless of his past over the pounding of his own blood in his ears. Him petting Kuro. Michiru leaving to tell Nazuna that the Silver Wolf really does exist with his permission.

Rose exchanges a few words he barely remembers before saying something that draws him out of his haze of anxiety.

“You can’t keep living like this.”

It’s a simple statement. Quiet and even and from who he’s known the longest. But it makes his heart drop.

“Like what?” Shirou answers, barely hearing his own words.

“You can’t keep sacrificing yourself, Ogami. I don’t care if you’re immortal. It’s not healthy.”

“I’m fine, I can’t die,” he throws back, but he knows his words are empty.

“That’s not what I meant,” Rose says flatly.

Shirou feels like he’s been shot. Like if his heart pounds any faster his wounds and his scars, all the thousands of them tracing his body with silver, are going to start bleeding again.

“It doesn’t matter,” he tries to brush off, stumbling to a chair because he knows if he stays on his feet any longer he’s going to pass out again.

“It matters to me. It matters to Michiru. You really think I’m going to let you keep living like this, without any regard to the teenager you’ve basically adopted at this point?”

Shirou’s throat constricts from emotion, and when he finally meets Rose’s gaze her eyes widen at the sight of tears streaming down Shirou’s face.

“I have to,” he chokes out, clenching his fists in his lap, “I have to die again and again and again for the beastmen. It’s all I’m meant to do. If I don’t give everything I have why am I even still alive?”

Rose places a hand on his shoulder only to withdraw immediately thanks to how violently Shirou stiffens at the touch.

“Exactly,” he sniffs, wiping his tears and placing his head in his hands.

Rose is silent to the count of ten before hoarsely saying, “I see you didn’t get to read that note.”

Shirou can’t think of a reply, so he remains quiet.

“It said ‘try not to get it bloody again,’” Rose continues, defeatedly.

“Not one of your best jokes,” Shirou remarks, running a hand through his hair damp with sweat and tears.

“Sadly, you’re right,” Rose says, and then leaves him where he sits. She knows better than to try to reason with him when he’s like this.

Shirou remains in his lawn chair for half an hour? No, that can’t be right. By the time he brings his head out of being buried in his hands the sun has long since set. His joints are stiff from the cold and his injuries. He makes himself limp back inside, shutting the door to the balcony with much more effort than it should require.

Shirou shivers as he stumbles to his closet, opening the door and grabbing the entire pile of blankets he always has on hand for days like these. He wraps a particularly soft one around his shoulders as a substitution for his trench coat before dumping the rest on his couch. None of the lights are on, but it doesn’t matter to Shirou anyway. He can see fine, even if his sense of smell is gone thanks to crying nearly every moment he’s been conscious today.

Shirou sits down, and  _ buries  _ himself in blankets. In attempt to chase out the cold that chills him to the bone or make up for the touch he desperately craves but won’t allow himself or to just bury himself, he doesn’t quite know.

Shirou feels numb and raw and distant and exposed at the same time.

_ You can’t keep living like this. _

_ How can you save anyone when you can’t even save yourself? _

Shirou curls up in a ball beneath the layers of blankets drowning him, as if he can hug his knees tight enough he’ll disappear. But he doesn’t. Instead his tears threaten to choke him.

_ Can you do anything right? _ His consciousness growls at him. Not take care of himself, or protect his people, or even prevent Michiru from getting traumatized as a direct result of his actions.

He doesn’t answer.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are always appreciated! Find me on Tumblr @shirouogaymi


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